Transcript Test Bias SAT math differences between African-Americans, Whites & Asians Implications?   For minority students’ access to university education? For women’s entry into university programs requiring.

Test Bias
SAT math differences between
African-Americans, Whites & Asians
Implications?
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For minority students’ access to university
education?
For women’s entry into university programs
requiring mathematical skill (engineering, math
science)?
Other Issues
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Decline in SAT scores in US
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Over a 14 year period in 1970’s & 80’s:
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SAT verbal scores dropped by nearly 50 points
SAT math scores dropped by 30 points
Blamed by some on “dumbing down of schools”
Solution: minimum competency testing (e.g., state-wide
exams for high school diploma)
Problem:
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If diploma sanction enforced, 20% of black high school
students would have been denied diploma, compared to only
2% of white students
Teacher Testing
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Used in many states in the United States
Proposed for use in Ontario by former Conservative
government
Consequences?:
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Florida: SAT, ACT scores required for entry into teacher
training
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Eliminated 80% of black, 60% of Hispanic, but only 37% of white
applicants
Alabama: 1995 state law requiring NTE for all teachers
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Pass rates of Blacks & Hispanics, 40% to 50%; for Whites, 80%
Lawsuit by black applicants resulted in new testing program where
there wasn’t more than 5% difference in pass rates
National Teacher Examination
(NTE)
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Most commonly used of teacher competency tests
Validity
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No correlation between NTE scores & principals’ ratings of
teachers in the classroom
Report done for National Education Association
concluded that thousands of Blacks & Hispanics
excluded from teaching profession on basis of NTE &
other teaching tests
NTE became known as “Negro Teacher Eliminator”
Resulted in change of NTE by ETS
Arthur Jensen
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1969 article in Harvard Educational Review
Title: “How much can we boost IQ and scholastic
achievement?”
 “Compensatory education has been tried and
apparently it has failed”
 “genetic factors are strongly implicated in the
average Negro-white intelligence difference”
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Reaction to Jensen article
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Newsweek
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“Dr. Jensen’s view put simply is that most blacks are born with less
intelligence than most whites”
demonstrations
has had many notorious supporters
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Richard Herrnstein
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differences in intelligence are inherited
as environments are improved, mental abilities will become more
important, and “the closer will human society approach a caste system”
with low IQ individuals in the lower castes
“if this is a fair picture of the future, then we should be preparing
ourselves for it, rather than railing against its dawning”
Philippe Rushton, University of Western Ontario
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model of race is based on a division of humankind into
three major races: Mongoloid, Caucasoid and Negroid.
proposes that consistent rank orders for these three races
can be seen in all kinds of data, including IQ scores, crime
statistics, prevalence of AIDS, head size and penis length.
What Do Test Differences Indicate?
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Racial differences in intelligence?
Research in population genetics shows that there are
few biological differences between races
 Diseases function equivalently in different races, and
equivalent treatment produces equivalent benefit
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What Do Test Differences Indicate?
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Test are culturally unfair?
Children with disadvantaged or culturally different
backgrounds have not had chance to learn information
contained on intelligence tests
 Language used on tests geared towards white children
with middle-class upbringing
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Solutions
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Use “culture-free” tests (e.g., Raven’s) (reduces but does
not eliminate cultural differences)
Administer test using African American dialect (little
impact)
Eliminate unfair items (little impact)
Differential Item Functioning Analysis (little impact)
Use culturally-based tests (e.g., Chitling Test, BITCH)
System of Multicultural Pluralistic Assessment
(SOMPA)
Chitling Test
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A "handkerchief head" is:
(a) a cool cat, (b) a porter, (c) an Uncle Tom, (d) a hoddi, (e) a preacher.
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Which word is most out of place here?
(a) splib, (b) blood, (c) gray, (d) spook, (e) black.
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A "gas head" is a person who has a:
(a) fast-moving car, (b) stable of "lace," (c) "process," (d) habit of stealing cars,
(e) long jail record for arson.
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"Bo Diddley" is a:
(a) game for children, (b) down-home cheap wine, (c) down-home singer, (d) new
dance, (e) Moejoe call.
Black Intelligence Test of Cultural
Homogeneity (BITCH)
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Mother’s Day means
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Blood means
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Black independence day
A day when mothers are honoured
A day the welfare cheques come in
Every first Sunday in church
A vampire
A dependent individual
An injured person
A brother of colour
The following are popular brand names. Which one does not
belong?
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Murray’s
Dixie Peach
Royal Crown
Preparation H
Newfoundland Intelligence Test
“Duckish is a term which means
1.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Many ducks huddled together in a pond’
A person who swims well
A person who shies away from danger
The time of day between sunset and dark
Which is biggest?
2.
1.
2.
3.
4.
A trap-boat
A long-liner
A schooner
A rodney
SOMPA
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Assumes that all cultural groups have same
average potential
Includes a medical portion (assessing vision,
hearing, motor functioning)
Incorporates WISC, but scores are adjusted for
socio-economic background & compared to
own ethnic group
What do test differences indicate?
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Differential validity?
Do tests like SAT, GRE have same validity when
applied to different groups?
 If test is valid for majority group, and invalid for
minority group, this presents a problem in using the
test as a criterion for selection
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Standard Regression Plot
Single Regression Slope for Two
Groups
Regression – Two Groups with
Equal Slopes but Different Intercepts
Regression Lines with
Different Slopes
What Do Test Differences Indicate?
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Social & economic inequality?
Accepting this explanation suggests that to reduce
differences, need to address the problem of economic
inequality & access to quality education
Ralph Nader
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report entitled “The Reign of ETS: The
Corporation That Makes Up Minds”
tests like SAT & LSAT have little power to predict
how well students will do in school and even less
power to predict anything about life after school
 tests are biased against minority-group and lowincome students
 despite disclaimers by ETS, coaching can be effective
in boosting scores (and wealthier students have
greater access to such coaching)
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Astin (1971)
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“to defend selective admissions on the grounds that
aptitude tests and high school grades predict
performance is perhaps to miss the main point of
education” (whether students learn and acquire skills
and knowledge that are of value either to themselves or
to society)
at elementary& high school level, we want to educate all
students to fullest potential
at post-secondary level, “sorting and selecting” function
seems to take over
Truth in Testing Movement
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Lobbied for:
test-takers having access to test results within a
specified period after test administration
 test publishers file information on test development,
validity, reliability and cost with government agencies
 testing agencies give individual test takers
information on nature and intended use of tests
prior to testing and guarantee their right of privacy
concerning own test scores
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Organized Psychology’s Reaction
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Lerner’s 1979 APA address:
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“The attack on tests is, to a very considerable and very
frightening degree, an attack on truth itself by those who deal
with unpleasant and unflattering truths by denying them and
by attacking and trying to destroy the evidence for them.”
suggested that leaders of National Education Association
oppose standardized testing because tests reveal what an
inadequate job educators have been doing; that leaders of
NAACP attacked test results “because they show that
integration alone cannot solve the problems of illiterate black
youth”
Choices
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Unqualified individualism
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Quotas
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Tests used to select the most qualified individuals, regardless of race,
gender & other characteristics
Recognizes race & gender differences
Percentage of applicants selected from race or gender groups should be
the same as the percentage of those groups in the general population
E.g., if population of a province is 10% Black, then 10% of students
selected for medical school should be black
Qualified individualism
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Argues for the selection of the best qualified individuals; however,
characteristics such as race, gender & religion taken into account
Affirmative Action
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positive steps taken to increase the
representation of women and minorities in areas
of employment, education, and business from
which they have been historically excluded
When those steps involve preferential selection—
selection on the basis of race, gender, or
ethnicity—affirmative action generates intense
controversy.
Texas Campus Attracts Fewer Minorities
By Sue Anne Pressley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 28 1997
As classes begin today at the University of Texas, this flagship school in
a highly diverse state has become distinctively whiter. Among the freshman class
of 6,500, there are only 150 African American students, half last year's number.
And the law school, for years one of the nation's major educators of minority
lawyers, is welcoming only four African Americans and 26 Hispanics to its firstyear class.
The experience of Texas is being watched closely around the country
because its universities are the first under court order to dismantle affirmative
action policies. That court ruling, the so-called Hopwood case, named for the
white student who brought a discrimination suit after being denied admission to
the university's law school, says that race cannot be used as a factor in admissions.
Texas Attorney General Dan Morales ruled that this basic ban on affirmative
action also must include financial aid, recruiting and undergraduate programs.
This is the first academic year in which the impact of Hopwood has
been felt clearly in Texas. Before the ruling, the university, like others around the
country, could use race as one factor in deciding which students to admit, a policy
that led to acceptance of minorities with slightly lower test scores than those of
white students.
What would you do?